Viber is one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, and the company continues to improve the service and tweak the user experience with a steady stream of updates. For those unaware of the service and what it does, Viber is a messaging and Voice Over IP (VoIP) client that allows users to send calls, text messages and video calls to other Viber users free of charge. It’s a major convenience for users who want greater flexibility in how they communicate with others, and the service has gained hundreds of millions of active users over the years. The Viber team made their service even better with a recent update that tweaks and improves a few of the app’s core features. The result is a mostly familiar experience that brings some improved utility and all-around better performance.
The first major tweak involves group chats, which now allows users to see which friends have viewed or liked their messages. Previously, group chat users would have no way of knowing whether a specific person saw a particular message in a running chat (unless, of course, said user responded directly). That’s no longer a problem in the most recent update, as the app keeps users informed as to who’s looking at what during chat sessions. The Viber team also included some helpful changes in a few other areas: The camera is improved for video calls and “New Message Popups” no longer interrupt users while they’re using a different app. The new update isn’t exclusive to just mobile apps, though. Viber includes some enhanced functionality for the desktop Chrome browser with a recent update to their plugin. When using Chrome, users can now share links to webpages to members of their contact group directly from the Chrome browser, and can even highlight, right-click and share specific text if they don’t feel like sending the entire page.
While the changes from this update appear small on the surface, they do bring some added utility to an extremely popular messaging app. More importantly, it helps Viber to keep pace with some of its biggest competitors (e.g. WhatsApp, Snapchat, Messenger) in the increasingly competitive mobile messaging market. Users should see the latest version of the app (5.8) in the Google Play Store within the coming days.